For the third year running, I have won National Novel Writing Month. I failed in my initial goal of doing two books; although I kept up well enough for the first week, my co-writer made it clear that he would not be finishing very early on, and I mostly lost interest after that.
But my solo book carried me through, and, unlike last year's attempt, I love it greatly. The novel shall be called Coarse Fetters, and it tells the story of a small circle of high-school-aged friends and their coming of age, centered around a Road Trip. When it's done and edited up, I'm confident it'll be the best thing I've ever written. For now, work continues on it; at 50,000 words, I may be almost halfway done.
This year was the easiest so far. I finished a day early, and could have finished much earlier if I hadn't taken a few days off. I did no writing whatsoever at work, I maintained a reasonable (though not optimal) workout schedule, I spent some time with friends, and I started ballroom dancing lessons. I could have finished a second book, but only with a fair amount of sacrifice in the rest of my life. Even so, 1,666 words a day, no exceptions, is a pace that takes some effort to keep up, and I plan to take a few weeks off from working on it. There are plenty of other things waiting for me to write them in the meantime!
My friend Harry alerted me to the existence of a scriptwriting competition for radio dramas, for which I plan to write between one and three scripts between now and February. I'm optimistic that the playwriting challenge I did in August gave me some sort of foundation for this new quest, but I've already run my ship aground on the treacherous reefs of plosives and sibilants. Must art ever give way to the limits of technology? But then, what is art but the employment of technology for the sake of expression?
My writing skills aren't the only thing that have improved over the last few months. My fantasy football team stands in first place in my 12-person work league; I owe nearly all its success to the excellent advice of a very wise person named Scott (not me).
I have very little interest in football. Primarily, I enjoy spending time with my friends, letting myself get swept up in their enthusiasm for it; this has been the main source of positive reinforcement for me to pay attention to football at all. I grew up completely lacking interest in any sport; it seemed to me a bunch of sweaty nonsense where great effort was expended for the accomplishment of very little. Means should not be ends.
But I've always been entranced with especially complicated machinae, and, on closer inspection, football certainly fits the bill. Realizing that, in theory, every one of those participants in these sweaty, nonsensical rituals is as finely tuned mentally, physically, and socially to perform his given task as modern science can accomplish (within certain limits) puts a different spin on it. We're watching athletes, yes, but we're also watching a medically exceptional demonstration of an altered paradigm of human existence. For these teams, the game is a literal way of life. It's a little humbling, in that respect, when you understand how small the differences are at that very top level of human performance, yet how dramatic the results can be for it.
I considered, once, the fun of a football league composed entirely of robots. Injuries could be so much more explosive, plays more intensely kinematic, and it would remove a lot of the frustration inherent in dealing with messy organic lifeforms. But now, I realize that we're already watching a game of machines, no less so simply because blood flows through them instead of some other sustaining fluid. Entire city-states bend their power to producing the best-performing of them, coders search endlessly for superior programming, and dedicated staffs of hundreds work without rest to maintain and improve these thoughtless beasts. For they do not think; they cannot decide their goals. They have only one aim, to win, and the rest is algorithms computing courses of action and chances of success. In the meantime, they make no choices. They strive forever, and are no more immortal than the perfect robots I thought might replace them. But then, there's always next year's model.
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